Been thinking a bit about this, popular music (the ones that hit top 100 charts or whatever) never has lyrics that point out real problems or point to culprits and how they’re fucking our shit, which is very easy to find in punk rock and some variations, as well as rap.
Of course, part of the problem are the record labels themselves, which often hold artists “hostage” in order to profit off them. Bigger ones will obviously prefer to avoid having such lyrics become popular.
Still, there seems to be absolute zero songs in certain genres that even come within 10 meters of talking/singing/teaching/bringing awareness about situations that affect a LOT of listeners, even from far away, and would be extremely helpful in spreading some knowledge.
Granted, doing so is easier said than done, a catchy tune that calls out big oil’s many attempts to burn the world, or big pharma’s frequent price gouging, aren’t things “any idiot” can come up with. But that nobody outside “angry” genres seems to be doing it is what saddens me.
While there may very well be a conspiracist element to this, I suspect that it’s simpler than that. For a lot of people music is meant to be their escape from reality, so having reality interject ruins the experience - as such any songs that try to capture that simply don’t get as popular, so end up in alternative genres
That is it for me. Music, like PC games and Movies/TV Shows, are my escape from reality and I don’t want to have that tainted and ruined by real world, politics or the like.
Yeah, popular music - by definition - is going to have a broad appeal, and pointing out major problems with our society is always going to be at least a bit divisive, especially when the issue is split in party lines